Amazing! IPB Students Invent a Tool to Guard Indonesian Borders

The amount of damage that is done during piracy, pillagry, illegal fishing, illegal toging, illegal migrant, illegal exploitation of natural resources, smuggling, and damage of the Indonesian marine ecosystems that Indonesia has gone through is uncountable.

The Indonesian Goverment, under the leadership of the Minister of Marine and Fisheries Susi Pudjiastuti declared war agains IUU Fishing (Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated Fishing). According to Minister Susi, piracy of fish in Indonesia has created a loss to Indonesia as much as more than Rp. 2000 Trillion.

The efforts that the government has done against these crimes in Indonesian waters are patrols along the borders of Indonesia, supervisions with satellites which need time to rotate and take pictures of the Indonesian region. Therefore, an innovation that could do the supervisions of the Indonesian borders that could be done automatically and through real time was highly needed.

Three students from Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) created an instrument that had the ability to differantiate the sounds of fishery ships from other ships that entered the Indonesian borders. Through the Student Creativity Creations Program (PKM-KC) 2018, Fariz Mustafa Kamal (Department of Marine Biology and Technology), Bung Daka Putera (Department of Machinery and Biosistem Engineering), and Muhammad Rofiq Gempur Tirani (Department of Computer Science), designed Buoy, which is BOPL-1, Guardian for Maritime Borders of Indonesia with and Automatically Real Time System Base to actualize a sovereign Indonesia. This research was supervised by Prof. Dr. Ir. Indra Jaya , MSc.

“Buoy is an instrument that can measure oceanographic parameters and meteorology which is attached to measure and supervise the condition of the ocean and atmosphere,” explained Fariz, the leader of the team.

BOPL-1 is an abbreviation for Buoy the Marine Guardian (Buoy Penjaga Laut in Indonesian). BOP-1 is equipped with a hydrophone to record the sounds of ships which cross the waters to be than further analyzed so that it is possible to differentiate the sounds of fishing ships from other ships that enter the Indonesian waters. (AVR)